Apple’s Liquid Glass user interface isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Apple’s new design language stems from a multi-year development process that began with visionOS. Given the extensive timelines and deep integration across iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and other platforms (as seen with the unified rollout in 2025–2026 versions like iOS 26 and macOS Tahoe), any significant pivot or reversal from Liquid Glass would almost certainly require years to plan, develop, and implement.
Mark Gurman for Bloomberg News:
To that end, the latest internal versions of iOS 27 and macOS 27 don’t reflect major design changes, and there’s no sign that another overhaul is currently in active development.
Liquid Glass was a massive undertaking across Apple’s entire design organization, and I haven’t been able to find any evidence suggesting there were designers internally opposed to it during development. Apple’s executive team was also fully behind the interface.
In interviews during WWDC last year, Apple marketing chief Greg Joswiak and software engineering head Craig Federighi were both effusive about the new design language. “Glass has some really useful properties when it comes to user interfaces,” Federighi told Joanna Stern. “It just looks super cool.” Joswiak added that users “love” the visionOS interface that inspired it.
And if Apple has actually entered what some think is a new design era, it’s been a bumpy start. The first icons rolled out under the current regime — the ones for Apple’s new Creator Studio apps bundle — are some of the most underwhelming from the company in a while.…
There are legitimate concerns about readability and the way certain transparent elements overlap with text and icons. And while the design works particularly well on the iPhone and iPad, it still needs refinement on the Mac and Apple Watch.
For that reason, I expect years of gradual improvements — much like what Apple went through following the introduction of iOS 7.
MacDailyNews Take: It’ll take time, but it’ll get there. Liquid Glass has already improved during the first beta rounds. The decision to speed up the spread of Liquid Glass (developed over years for visionOS) across Apple’s platforms was recent, due to Apple’s AI misses, stumbles, and delays.
Liquid Glass is a six-month rush job because it’s meant to be a shiny object to distract from the current lack of Apple Intelligence innovations as that catch-up work continues, BUT, Liquid Glass shows much promise!
Yes, Liquid Glass sometimes presents legibility issues, but those can be solved and, likely, are being solved as you read this.
When, not if, Apple launches a Siri — or whatever name with which they, hopefully, rebrand it; “Siri” is just too tarnished at this point — that is not an abject neglected embarrassment (reportedly by WWDC next June, at the very latest), Liquid Glass will be much further along and a lot of the current readability issues will have been tackled. – MacDailyNews, September 17, 2025
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